The companies said the deal stood to accelerate their respective abilities to provide integrated energy services and electric vehicle charging solutions to homes, while also benefitting the provision of grid services via sonnen’s virtual power plant platform.

Mark Gainsborough, executive vice president for new energies at Shell, said full ownership of sonnen would allow it to offer customers more choice over their energy consumption.

“Together, we can accelerate the building of a customer-focused energy system in support of Shell’s strategy to offer more and cleaner energy solutions to customers.”

Christoph Ostermann, chief executive and co-founder at sonnen, said: “Shell New Energies is the perfect partner for helping us grow in a market that is expanding rapidly. With this investment we’re excited to help more households to become energy independent and benefit from new opportunities in the energy market. Shell will help drive the growth of sonnen to a new level and help speed up the transformation of the energy system.”